Metallic glasses are potentially useful materials at the frontier of materials science research. They combine the advantages and avoid many of the problems of normal metals and glasses, two classes of materials with a wide range of applications. Carnegie scientists used high pressure to probe the connection between the density and electronic structure of a cerium-aluminum metallic glass, opening up new possibilities for developing metallic glasses for specific purposes.

A newly discovered star outside the Milky Way has yielded important clues about the evolution of our galaxy. Located in the dwarf galaxy Sculptor some 280,000 light-years away, the star has a chemical make-up similar to the Milky Way’s oldest stars, supporting theories that our galaxy grew by absorbing dwarf galaxies and other galactic building blocks.   

Astronomers have found the first clear evidence of a binary quasar within a pair of actively merging galaxies. Binary quasars, like other quasars, are thought to be the product of galaxy mergers. Until now, however, binary quasars have not been seen in galaxies that are unambiguously in the act of merging.  But images of a new binary quasar from the Carnegie Institution’s Magellan telescope in Chile show two distinct galaxies with “tails” produced by tidal forces from their mutual gravitational attraction.  Watch movie